1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic device, an image-processing device, and an image-processing method that can control production of an image of a television (TV) broadcast.
2. Description of the Related Art
If a user searches for a TV program he/she wishes to watch by using a TV receiver or the like, the user searches for the TV program by seeing a known program list shown on a newspaper, a magazine, an electronic program guide (EPG), and so forth. Recently, however, the TV receiver acquires the EPG through the Internet and/or a broadcast wave, and makes a search by using information about the genre and/or keyword of a program.
However, it remains usual that the user makes the search by performing zapping. The term “zapping” means that the user switches between a plurality of channels by operating a remote controller in front of the TV receiver. The zapping is considered to be useful due to the following reasons. Namely, it is considered that the user can understand arranged information about channels, a time slot, and program contents by using the newspaper, the EPG, and so forth. Further, if a little time is left for making the search, it is also considered that a program which is going to be seen by the user can be found and understood immediately by actually seeing information about the program.
However, there is a defect in making the search by performing the zapping. Namely, if the user tunes from one channel to another channel on which a commercial-message (hereinafter referred to as a CM) broadcast is currently transmitted, the user has to wait till the CM broadcast is finished, so as to know the program contents. In other words, the waiting time is wasted. Therefore, there has been proposed a technology for automatically producing images accumulated on a image-signal-output device other than the TV receiver while the CM broadcast is transmitted, where the image-signal-output devices includes a video-tape recorder, an optical-disk device, and so forth. The above-described technology is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-243307 (refer to paragraph 0005, FIG. 1, and so forth).